My imperfect journey to a cruelty-free life

Courage

Our family trip to Grand Canyon in May of 2015 has been on my mind all afternoon. It was such a great trip and the Grand Canyon is so amazingly beautiful. The photo above is one of my favorites because the girls and I were giving David a heart attack every time we stepped close to the edge. The girls and I weren’t afraid, though. Looking down, seeing high up we were, and then looking all around at the enormity of what was around us…..it’s hard to put in words how incredible it is.

This was also shortly before we found out that Kayla had cancer. We had no idea at the time we were standing here that our lives would change forever.

Kayla is in remission; she has been for over a year. However, she is having surgery on Monday to have a mass removed. We have no idea what the mass is. The odds are it’s nothing. But once you’ve been touched by cancer, you don’t think about odds any longer. You just pray really hard and hope that everything turns out okay.

The closer we get to Monday, the bigger the knot in my stomach gets, the heavier the feeling of dread hangs over the room. As long as I stay busy, I seem to be okay, but as soon as I slow down, even for a moment, I feel a wave of panic come over me.

So to keep myself grounded, I keep going back to this photo from our family trip. A feeling of complete joy comes over me whenever I look at it. I can feel the warm sun on my face; the feeling of freedom from any kind of worry in this breathtaking place. When you witness this kind of beauty, you forget about everything else. It was also a really great time for our family and I’ll always treasure it.